


Her King, She Doubts

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Absent Characters, Alcohol, Diplomatic Boundaries, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heartache, Mirrors, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regret does not make them equals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her King, She Doubts

The King, not unusually, is drunk.

What is unusual, she ruminates, is that she is not entirely sober either. She would not, as she characterises her King from her seat by the low hearth and his slouched form in the shadow of the evening light filtering in through the balcony, consider herself drunk. Drunk is a loss of decorum, of muscle control, of spatial estimation and understanding. She has the latter two. Her King, she doubts.

But doubting like drunk is nothing new to her thoughts and understanding of her King. He is, as she has understood for many, many years now, a difficult King and an even more difficult person. She is not old enough to be wise for she is an elf who was not born to see Silmarils or to know Morgoth. One could say she is simply not old enough. Closer to the truth are the things her King has said. Her King has an acid tongue, but he does not twist the truth. It makes him a good King for he is quick and astute just as much as he is sure and strong, but it makes him a poor person.

Her King, from what she hears (and she hears much both as Captain and elf and the fact is that all creatures of any tongue love to gossip), is much like his father in this. She did not know Oropher, but, from what she's gathered, no one did. Contemporary, advisors, observers, even his son: the late King Oropher was an enigma, inscrutable and often unkind for it. He built a kingdom on a model grand from humble foundations, and he was respected and honoured but not understood. Again, this is where the father and the son mirror and meet. They are strong Kings for a hard land and hard times.

But her King is not Oropher. Oropher, even she knows, had no humour and was weathered in a way that was not elven. No one said it, not aloud for there are things that should never be said, but that was the truth. Oropher was a good King, a strong King, but he was not beloved. There were flashes of cruelty and a darkness in him that any elf would naturally shy away from, and she can see that, even though Oropher was never her King and she knows him only from stories. She remembers a selfish spark of relief that Oropher died and Thranduil was made King, if only because Thranduil had never been known and would never be so unelvishly cruel. 

But Thranduil became King at a bad time. Perhaps, she supposes, there is never a good time become King, but back then he had been in mourning. There had been the wars, the battles, and there had been Doriath and betrayal and slaughter long before. There are things that she cannot fathom, even with Smaug and Five Armies and all else that has come to pass. Legolas, like her, little more than a child, is still instinctively reaching out for guidance in the smallest things, and Thranduil, she knows, has responded as best he can. He is their King, and he is sure and strong, but he is not someone who knows what to do with the heart. 

Thranduil was young where there were still Silmarils and Morgoth and legions of dragons and wyrms. Smaug was just one dragon, and he was lesser and weaker than most. She cannot fathom what would be had Smaug been greater, and it gives her perspective and lets her understand. There's a part of her that suspects that Thranduil has never been able to pass out of mourning. Perhaps, if his immortal life was not his, he would have had the time. But becoming King put a stopper in that life that was Thranduil and levered the mantle of Thranduil King. There are many in the court who are much older than her, and those who have remained of Oropher's court are older than Thranduil, but the mantle of King makes Thranduil seem older, wiser, remote in a thousand and million more ways.

It is the older and wiser qualities that make Thranduil respected and beloved by his people, but the remoteness is what fosters admiration from afar and heartache from those close. There are very few who are close. She knew this, of course, and thought she knew it well as Captain of the Guard. Legolas did not and will never complain for he is his father's son although everyone knows the light in his eyes is his long-passed mother's. Where there was palpable darkness in Oropher's gaze, such that his eyes used to chase her in her adolescent nightmares, Thranduil's eyes are reflections: starlight off still water, sunrays filtering through the canopy. Oropher was shadowed. Legolas seeks light. And Thranduil -

A shifting, more of hair than anything else. "You brood."

It is not a criticism, although it could be easily interpreted as such. "Yes."

She cannot see his expression from their angles, but it would do her little good if she could. He is reticent at best and often incomprehensible when not giving direct orders. In this, Legolas takes after his father. The Prince, for all of his light and zest and barely contained passion, is no better at expressing himself. It is something that people often forget and are thus shocked when confronted with it. It is not, of course, that Legolas is Prince and that he is the King's son, but the odd reticence that goes beyond all other elven lords and ladies. She has seen Legolas sometimes bereft because of it. He feels just as strongly as anyone else, but he lacks the language, the gestures, and what he does have is secondhand and comes off like pantomime. 

But Legolas is aware of this as a shortcoming. She has known him long and well, and the moments where he, Legolas Greenleaf, blooms forth like sunrise have become more frequent, more natural. It is in his smiles, which are many, broad and soft and that stretch his face into something more than flesh and bone. It is in the way his fingers contemplate his bow, care beyond any expert, the bow a better arm than his own. And it is in how he looked at her, for many passes of the Moon, and that she knows but cannot (despite because simply) regret.

It is regret, which she lacks, that brings her shortcomings to light. And it is regret, because she lacks it, that allows her to sit in her King's observatory and lets her share his wine. Regret does not make them equals. After all, her shortcomings are in the things she could not save and could not have because she did not have a right to them in the first place. She is an elf, not simple and not untried but not old or wise. She is an elf, born in the Greenwood that is no longer green, a flower that needs thorns to search the sun, and that is the only thing she can, could, and ever will be.

Her King, quite suddenly, laughs. It's little more than a sharp bark, short and piercing. It is not a drunken giggle nor does it mimic mirth. An elk, she thinks, not so absurdly, warning.

"More wine?"

He asks it to the stars that cannot be seen. She knows it is not an offer she should or will take. He does not wait for her response, rising to his feet with his goblet in hand. She watches him, the solid fluidity of his movements, predator cataloging predator. He does not spill a drop, bottle to goblet to mouth. He sets the goblet down, a heavy, hollow thump. He smiles, wide enough that she can almost see teeth.

"You may take your leave."

She stands. She has obeyed orders since she could choose to, and elves, for all the length of an immortal life, have short childhoods. At the door, she pauses, a hunter's instinct rearing against turning her back on another hunter. She listens to him pour the last of this decanter's wine into his goblet.

"Tauriel."

She meets his gaze. It is a mistake, and she cannot even recoil. He holds the goblet loose and careless. He does not smile, does not frown, does not try to shape his face in any way. He does not need to.

"Go."

She turns. Predators, too, flee in the face of death.

 

She goes, some days, to Laketown, to Dale, to the boundaries of Erebor.

She goes, in some ways, to ruins. There are Men and Drawves, and the ruins are full of them, but these places are yet ruins. She can and always will smell the blood and ash and stench in the air in the shadow of Smaug and all that followed. She goes, sometimes, with others when it is for diplomatic reasons but more often than not she goes alone for her own.

Bard, Dragonslayer and all his other names he does not want, greets her. "Captain Tauriel."

She is not Captain, not anymore, and she has said so many, many times, but no one seems to care. "Bard."

He smiles. He is a good man, rough and noble and terrified of all he suddenly has, and she understands him in a way that she understands nobody else. He looks up at her from where he sits on stone steps that have only recently been freed of weeds and moss and grime. From his hands, he must has done some of the work himself.

"Are you here in Dale or continuing to the Mountain?"

In truth, she has not decided. There is much that is up to her own choice these days. Her King does not give her leave, but he does not deny it. She is legally still banished, but her King is inscrutable and always has been. He rules as he has ever, and his decisions to do with the matters of ruling are sound. But his eyes are full of death, and she cannot stand to be around him for long.

She shrugs, a gesture that is new and she worries absurdly that she resembles Legolas in his pantomime moments. Bard chuckles, not mockingly.

"Sometimes I -" and he stops, an uncertain look settling over his face; she understands that he is not used to second-guessing his tongue. "I do not know what I am doing."

They stay together like that for a long moment, her looking down, him looking up. They do not seek guidance because the blind leading the blind cannot be, not for them. She wonders if this is what it is like to have a friend, and it tears against the thing she desperately wants to keep buried. She swallows.

"I know," she says, and she does.

 

She spies Thranduil out under the stars.

It is a shock. Her King rarely leaves the confines of the wood. She would not have seen him if she hadn't stopped to make camp, feeling unusually unsettled and strangely woozy. She sits straight, resisting the instinct to shrink back, and stares at the odd figure her King cuts in the shadow of the outer trees as he walks, the path he is taking exactly the kingdom's border. His head is slightly bent, his arms tucked in front of him. He has something in his hands. He is alone.

It is that fact that makes her surge to her feet. She is no longer Captain or even Guard, but that was her role for so many long years. She hurries, a thousand questions at her heels, and her haste makes her less silent than she would be. Her King halts his progress but does not turn.

"Tauriel."

She stops. "My lord," she asks, and she does not understand why she feels winded. "Where is your guard?"

He turns. Their gazes meet. Death and starlight and glass. He holds a mirror in his hands.

"My guard is right here."

She feels, abruptly, as if she is going mad. It makes her take a step back and then three forward. The mirror in his hands she recognises, and it makes her heart jump in her throat.

"That's mine."

He holds it gently, her hand mirror. It was a gift, the only remnant she has of what she was before she was Guard and Captain. She wants to grab it, but this is her King, and she is banished but in the end -

"It is all you have," he says.

He tilts his head, like she is something vaguely interesting or deeply disgusting. It's how he's always looked at her. She feels suddenly like weeping.

"My lord -"

"I am not," and he is not cruel, and he never has been; she has always known this. "You are banished."

She does choke then, a wretched, wringing sob. She is fading. She has known this, knew it immediately when she pressed the stone back into that gloved, still-warm hand. The stone that returned to the earth, that went deep into the Mountain. She could not follow. She could not regret. 

Her King looks at her. She stares back. She has seen beneath that gaze. Thranduil does not care for illusions or shadows or any of the things that his father was. He is reticent and inscrutable, but he is good. She was once so relieved to serve him and that is not changed. He has not changed. She has.

"I am."

He holds out the mirror. It is not an order, but she takes it. It is cold, metal and glass, so very delicate even if the metalwork is unrefined. She looks down into the glass. There is death in her eyes.

"Go," Thranduil says.

She knows.

 

It is when they are deep into the wine, deep enough that the fires burn low and the chill begins to creep in, that Bard feels it is appropriate to ask.

"What happened to Captain Tauriel?"

Thranduil doesn't respond immediately, but Bard has had time to grow used to these silences. They are never present in matters of state where Thranduil strikes as swiftly as Bard knows he does in battle. In those moments, Thranduil is undoubtedly King. But in these moments, when wine is present (and it is always near), Bard is once more Bard. Thranduil is not quite Thranduil but Bard has begun to understand that perhaps there isn't a Thranduil. There are only fragments to work from.

"She passed," Thranduil says at length, and he reaches out to pour them both more wine. "Ten moons ago now."

A part of Bard, the part that is a rough, weathered, but simple Man, wants to ask. The other part, the one that has all the names and that terrifies Bard in the mirror, already knew.

"Was it peaceful?"

Thranduil blinks. This takes Bard aback. It isn't so strange a question, but, from that reaction, it is as if Bard asked something extremely bizarre. Thranduil holds his goblet loose, but it lacks his characteristic careful carelessness. The silence stretches before Thranduil sits back, body slouching. It would usually look careless, but this is clearly self-defense.

"No."

Bard clutches his goblet. He is abruptly extremely upset. Not with Thranduil. Not with Tauriel. Not with anything in particular, really, except that he can be upset.

"Oh," he says.

He takes a deep drink of his wine, even though it's so strong. Thranduil looks into his goblet. Bard is struck with a truly insane thought that perhaps they are not so different, Men and Dwarves and Elves and even Hobbits. 

"I wish," Bard says because he is a Man and he is drunk and he can say such things, "I could have said good-bye."

Thranduil looks at him. He looks like he wants to say something, anything, everything but there are no words for it. It's not a desperate look, but it is bereft and empty and lightless. 

"Yes."

That's all there is to say to that.


End file.
